The Writer's Poke

Ben Stiller makes a very believable 16-year-old nerd. Cameron Diaz, too, can pass as the pretty popular high school girl. I found that I really liked the opening set-up more than most of what followed. Sometimes I find myself writing a different movie than the one written. It's a bad habit, I guess, but that opening segment was so good, I just found myself a little disappointed when it then jumped ahead 13 years to the present. The movie as written: Ted (Stiller) is a nerd, but for whatever reason, the pretty girl, Mary (Diaz), likes him. She is the one who actually invites him to Prom. Stiller's smile, mouthful of braces, is so sweet. He looks like Charlie Brown got asked to the Prom by the Little Redheaded girl. Unfortunately, they never make it to Prom. A ridiculous series of events in the bathroom lands Ted in the hospital, and Mary moves away. That's odd. As nice and as considerate as Mary is, she doesn't visit Ted in the hospital, and she never contacts him again....

Nancy M. Pimental wrote this one. From 1998-2001, she was a staff writer on South Park, which kind of gives you a sense of the humor likely to be used in this movie. She's also credited with writing 25 episodes of Shameless (TV series with 134 episodes, 2011-2021 and a current IMDb rating of 8.5). I include this because it would be so easy to write-off The Sweetest Thing as juvenile and stupid. And yes, it probably is juvenile and stupid, but in a Harold and Kumar (2004) way. That's the film that immediately came to mind as I started watching this. And yet, Sweetest Thing has a 5.2 IMDb rating, and Harold and Kumar has a 7.0 IMDb rating. I don't think that's fair. Is it just because this film features women being crude, whereas we're more accepting of crudeness from men? Roger Ebert, for example, rated Sweetest Thing a Thumbs Down (1.5/4 stars). In his assessment, he admitted that he loved watching the three female leads, admiring how committed and into their roles ...